webmaster posted on September 08, 2011 15:07
I sat quietly as the holiness of my surroundings settled upon and within me. Next to me was my friend and former colleague in ABCUSA life, Al Brinson. We were together on the front pew of the recently renovated historic Ebenezer Church – the home church of American Baptist pastor Martin Luther King, Jr., who Al had known so well.
As I looked around the modest sized sanctuary and faced towards the pulpit, I experienced a sense of awe as I thought, “This is where Dr. King’s moral imagination was fed and its content formed by the holy texts of our faith. 
Here, from this pulpit, the voices of the prophets rang out with fresh meaning to a young black Christian living in the Jim Crow South. Here, the teachings of Jesus came with fresh urgency offering the message of reconciling love to a sensitive soul whose daily life was marked by separation according to race.”
The moral imagination that began to breathe within him in this sanctuary would continue to flourish at Crozer Theological Seminary with American Baptist mentors and professors. In its maturity it would call a whole country to repentance and to a new beginning out of the depths of alienation that bound the soul of our country. In its maturity, it would challenge the economic inequities that chained the poor and working poor to degrading living conditions and would offer instead a counter vision of a more equal America filled with opportunity for all. In its maturity, it would challenge the inevitability of war and its carnage and proclaim the possibility of the beloved community as the reality to which we are called by Jesus Christ.
In the coming weeks, our nation will pause to honor this great man and modern prophet as a statue is dedicated to him in the heart of our Capitol. In honoring him, we honor the dream that he dared to dream of a nation where people were judged only by the content of their character; of a nation where the promise of its Declaration of Independence and the rights and privileges enshrined in its hallowed Constitution were secured for all; of a nation in which the measuring stick of the national welfare is justice and mercy for all.
His dream cannot be understood, cannot be realized without understanding that its power lay rooted in its dependence upon the moral vision of Jesus and the Prophets. That moral vision is profoundly challenged today by the growing inequality between rich and poor in our country; by the increasing indifference to the needs of the most vulnerable in our society; and by a willingness to abandon any sense of the common welfare and focus solely on personal gain.
In Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, he stated, “This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.”
King believed that we would one day be free from the darkness of injustice, discrimination, violence and oppression. He was a drum major for justice. Can we not be members of his marching band?
Rev. A. Roy Medley
General Secretary, American Baptist Churches USA